Part 1: Comparative Education & History of Education 79

MANUEL JACINTO ROBLIZO COLMENERO

EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT AS DEFINING FACTOR IN SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION IN CONTEMPORARY SPAIN
Abstract
One especially relevant key theme in Sociology of Education is to what extent
parents’ cultural level has significant implications in students’ educational
achievement and, as a consequence, in the social mobility inherently linked to level
of education and professional training. In order to investigate this aspect on current
Spanish society, our purpose has been to make an analysis based on data coming
from public opinion surveys carried out by major sociological and statistical Spanish
institutions. Since recently, these data are freely available to researchers, what
makes possible the access to viewpoints of large samples of respondents. In short,
with a view in the two-generation transit throughout the Spanish educational system,
we will observe the validity of patterns of social and cultural inequality still
influencing -though not determining- the educational achievement of Spanish
population and, therefore, its professional development.

‘Cultural capital’ in contemporary Spanish society as a defining element of

intergenerational transmission
Some decades ago, the concept of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1970) was coined pursuing to disclose economically-based class relations that
underlay differences in performance in education, and offering, as well, a way to
question the dominant educational discourse. The term became a watershed in
analysis and reflections about the nature of the educational system, and developed
into one of the main spotlights in contemporary Sociology of Education. From 1970
on, social landscape in the so-called Western societies has changed dramatically,
moving from an industrial setting to a post-industrial one, where validity of class-
based assumptions is approached in a different -and frequently sceptical- way.
Even though it could be theoretically legitimate and appropriate, we are not
aiming now to analyze in depth the validity of 1970 Bourdieu and Passeron’s
claims, with all its theoretical connotations, but just to approach the current Spanish
educational reality with a view on a factor whose relevance was originally put
forward by these authors. In this sense, according to data from Spanish Institute
National for Assessment of Quality of Educational System (INECSE, 2005),
parents’ educational level turns out to be an adequate explanatory factor to be kept
in mind for an appropriate understanding of the social reality of education, since
there is a parallel progression between children’s results and parents’ level of studies
in every area of knowledge. The same research quantifies with Pearson’s correlation
index the link between family’s cultural level and achievement in Spanish language
(0.285), Maths (0.307) and Social and Natural Sciences (Conocimiento del medio)
(0.314) (INECSE, 2005, pp. 98, 150 and 61), which gives us a more precise
numerical expression of something that is hardly expressed with such accuracy
through words. In all the cases, the differences are statistically significant.
80 Educational achievement as defining factor in social stratification in contemporary Spain

The concept cultural capital itself provides us with a meaningful frame to

analyse the relevance of intergenerational transmissions in the particular Spanish
case in two steps: firstly, in educational achievement, where some significant
influences can easily be observed; secondly, we will try to make clear for this
paper’s readers how educational level acts as a key element strongly defining
-though not determining- positions in labour market, with special reference to the
peculiarities of the Spanish one. It was many years ago when Lester C. Thurow
posed the theory of the employment queue (Thurow, 1983) as a criticism of the
classic theory of human capital, originally formulated in relation to education by
Theodore W. Schultz (Schultz, 1968) and Gary Becker (Becker, 1983), which
emphasized the value of investments in training for economic promotion, both in the
personal and collective sense. From Thurow’s viewpoint, this was a valid approach
only for welfare economic periods, but in recession ones the adequacy between
qualifications and economic demand would be far from complete. In these contexts,
education becomes a defensive weapon, and it is no longer a way to achieve better
incomes.
In Spain, a main factor to weigh the extent to which a particular position in
workforce can be considered more or less successful or favourable is unemployment
rate, due to the special characteristics of the Spanish labour market. Only workers
with University qualifications offer an unemployment rate significantly below the
national average, which indicates a, comparatively speaking, more favourable
starting point in the employment race, so especially difficult in Spain (INECSE,
2004, p. 3). In our data, we will observe the validity of Thurow’s approach
nowadays, particularly in relation to stability in public sector work. Strongly linked
to the issues above, other factors are amenable to be analysed. Thus, it could be
weighed to what extent the so-called ‘cultural capital’ is linked to ‘economic
capital’.

Parents’ cultural background: incidence in educational attainment and

further studies expectations
When it comes to go deeper into the reasons that underpin these aforementioned
widely spread cultural influences, we should turn to the role of culturally-based
background, with a double meaning. Firstly, family’s cultural capital is decisively
linked to educational resources available for children and, secondly, appropriate
family environment usually generates equally appropriate attitudes towards
education and associates skills. Data from Survey about Household Expenditures in
Education 2007, carried out by National Statistics Institute, shows that the expenses
in education are significantly different if we look at educational level and
professional activities of breadwinners.
It has been also observed that the cultural capital has its corresponding
translation into social class, whose belonging acts as an influential factor regarding
percentages of 16 and 17 year-old population enrolled in post-compulsory secondary
education. Parents’ labour qualification can be considered as influential in a number
of aspects. This point has been approached focused on the still underlying
inequalities in enrolment rates, which has a particular meaning given that, apart from
individual achievement, parents’ working condition becomes an ingredient
amenable to be affecting children’s future perspectives and parents’ will to invest in
Manuel Jacinto Roblizo Colmenero 81

education for their offspring. In this sense, it has been observed (Calero, 2006) how
more than 72 per cent of children of manual non-qualified workers’ drop out after
compulsory education, with a similarly high figure (63.6) for the other worse-off
group, agrarian workers. In these cases, both the comparatively lower qualification -
and, therefore, educational level- and the worse economic condition can be
considered as very strongly defining elements at this stage that is the normal route to
University studies.
Data referring to number of books at home, TV consumption, availability at
home of the Internet and the frequency of parents’ assistance with children’s
homework are sufficiently meaningful of the diverse atmospheres offered in the
respective cultural backgrounds (Pérez-Díaz, Rodríguez & Sánchez, 2004). These
last aforementioned figures are clear indicators of the degree of parental
involvement in their offspring’s education. In this way, trying to define the specific
mechanisms working in this contemporary form of cultural capital, it is expected
that the differential availability of cultural resources at home would make easier a
differential achievement at school for the offspring living in these diverse cultural
environments.
The number of books available at home remarkably differs on the ground of the
different educational levels, with an especially noticeable gap between individuals
with University degrees and without studies (Survey about Participation of Adult
Population in Learning Activity 2011, National Statistical Institute). A similar value,
in that it is related to reading habits so strongly connected with success in education,
has the data (from the same aforementioned source) related to the frequency of
newspapers’ reading by educational level. Percentages turn out to be increasing as
we are going up in the educational level in the case of interviewees that read
newspapers on a nearly daily basis; and the opposite occurs when it comes to data
related to extreme low frequency of reading of newspapers. This factor can be
thought as a good indicator of propitiatory habits in offspring’s family settings. The
diversity of factors involved in the mechanism of cultural capital has been widely
covered by Spanish authors.
And this unequal availability of resources -both material and immaterial- is
connected, in the Spanish case, to the duality existing in the educational system
between private-owned and public-owned centers, with diverse consequences as the
different chances of promotion from one course to the following (Gimeno, 2004, pp.
187-190). Parents’ cultural level variable is present in Spanish reality, as well, as an
explanatory ingredient in relation to centre ownership, in that it is possible to find a
noticeably higher presence of highly-qualified and educated progenitors in private
educational institutions (INECSE, 2005, p. 60). Meanwhile, it has also been
observed that academic achievement is more satisfactory in private centres
(INECSE, 2005, pp. 58, 95 and 147; Instituto de Evaluación, 2010, pp. 160 and
162). Indeed, public/private dualism is apt to be approached as an additional -but
significant- factor. Comparing total percentages of respondents who studied in the
different types of educational centers with the corresponding percentages classified
by their highest achieved educational level it is possible to find significant remarks
about the influence of the private/public dualism in the long term (Survey on
Spanish Youth 2007, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas).
82 Educational achievement as defining factor in social stratification in contemporary Spain

This reality has become particularly apt to misunderstandings, and recent data
from Instituto de Evaluación makes clear -by taking into consideration the so-called
Socio-economic and Cultural Index (ISEC)- that results have to be analyzed at the
light of social setting of both students and centers (op. cit., pp. 162 and 163).
Reasons for this differential achievement have -as far as our data are concerned-
nothing to do with an intrinsically higher quality of teaching in private centres, but
with sociological traits of students. In fact, students with less favourable educational
conditions (mainly, immigrants, ethnic minorities, and marginal and rural
populations) are more widely tended by state-owned centres, and, subsequently,
results from these groups are numerically reflected in them. In the opposite sense,
students with the highest parents’ cultural background are statistically more prone to
be included in the most favourable social conditions offered by private centres.

Study-based labour market position

How could these years in contemporary Spain be defined when it comes to the
role of cultural level in the labour market? We can say that we are not living in the
atmosphere of prosperity, sharp economic growth and, specially, full-employment
that characterized human capital proponents’ years; on the contrary, Spanish
population has to live with certain degrees of unemployment, specially of what
could be called qualified unemployment, since the vast majority of the highly
educated work force does not wish to work in certain kinds of inappropriate jobs. It
is possible to talk, then, paraphrasing Thurow, about a ‘queue of qualified
employment’.
Though aforementioned Thurow’s viewpoint was originally referring to
unemployment situations that stem from the 70s crises, it seems that he was, to a
great extent, right even for current times, given that high qualifications and
educational levels lose part of the value that was arising from an offer/demand
mechanism. What becomes true is that in crisis a University qualified worker could
be in the same queue for subsidies as an illiterate one, but, even in these contexts,
qualified work force will face the professional future with better prospects.
In this sense, if something can be considered as very especially defining Spanish
culture towards work, it is certainly the wish to get a job in the public sector, as a
consequence of the deep concern for stability that characterizes our attitudes when it
comes to economic activity. In this sense, we would like to highlight how the level
of studies predominant in the public sector (civil service and public-owned
companies) is University, with a remarkable difference compared with private
sector, moreover. Even in underemployment cases, University studies become a
way, in short, to get not only better incomes, but as well a more desirable position
where stability has a major weight, which turns out to be a particularly decisive
factor for a majority of job seekers (Survey on Spanish Youth 2007, Centro de
Investigaciones Sociológicas).

Conclusion: the influence of parents’ educational level on children’s

development
This paper was originally conceived as a means to put into words and figures
how the educational level still behaves as the Ariadna’s thread that let us get out of
Manuel Jacinto Roblizo Colmenero 83

the labyrinth of social circumstances. It is not possible to talk in rigour, as it is

frequently done, of a determining effect of cultural level in intergenerational
transmissions. We would rather talk about conditioning influences, in that all the
figures in the tables and graphs above show how, in the first step, parents’ cultural
level has proved to affect children’s educational development and expectations, with
a view in the role that the private/public dualism plays in this complex game.
This, in turn, becomes the way for diverse higher education degrees that,
statistically speaking, have shown a positive effect on working activity, as much in
relation to incomes as in presence in the most envied sector of the Spanish economy.
In particular, in spite of the depth of the social changes that have contributed to
diminishing the gap between qualified and non-qualified work force, it is possible to
observe how highest educational levels still keep a comparatively privileged
position in the labour market. Put another way, if we talk about statistical
conditionings we emphasize that social factors -and particularly parental educational
background- do not completely mould society newcomers’ working lives, although,
with no doubt, they make it easier for the potter to outline the shape that has to be
given to the pre-existing clay.

References
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84 Educational achievement as defining factor in social stratification in contemporary Spain

Thurow, L. C. (1983): Educación e igualdad económica. Educación y sociedad, 2, 159-171.

Dr. Manuel Jacinto Roblizo Colmenero

Lecturer in Sociology
Faculty of Education
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)
Albacete, Spain
Manuel.Roblizo@uclm.es